Category Archives: Books

As Froggy gets ready for 3rd grade (what?!!), he has been asked by his teachers to keep a log of the books he reads over the summer. I thought it would be fun if he helped me create one for him. So he chose the frame and the font.

Viel Spaß beim Lesen!

We’re doing a little review today in pre-K/kindergarten. It’s hard to believe it’s almost the end of the year! The children have learned so much! And I’m so inspired to do even more with them next year!!

One of the things we will review today is the weather. We’ll look out the window to see what the weather is like and what we see: die Sonne, der Wind, die Wolke. It’s a beautiful day today 🙂

And we’ll read Elmar mag jedes Wetter again.

I prepared a coloring page for them as well. There are two versions. In the first version, the children can trace the weather words under the pictures. In the second version, I’ve given them a bit of a challenge. There is a word bank (Wortschatz), and they will have to choose the appropriate word to write under the image. I have plenty of each, so the children can choose what they would like to do.

Today is the last day that we will be working on our farm unit in Pre-K/Kindergarten.

For four weeks, I have been reading different books about the farm. And we have been working on a song. At the end of each lesson, the children get a coloring sheet with four animals or other things found on the farm. See this post for the coloring sheets.

I’ve learned a couple of things while doing this project for the first time!

First, I love having a theme that goes on for a few weeks! I’ve been able to read a number of different books from my collection. And because we’ve been singing the same song each week, the children seem to be learning it well! It makes lesson planning that much easier, too 🙂

Second, making a book out of 4 coloring sheets – to equal 16 small pages of the book – is a LOT for little ones! So instead of having them cut out all 4 pages today, I have prepped the work by cutting the first three pages that they have already colored. Then they will only have to color and cut one page today, and we can staple the booklet together! Maybe next time I won’t be quite so ambitious 🙂 But we’ll have to see how today goes first.

We’re a little late celebrating Easter in the pre-K/kindergarten class. I had planned a lesson for the week before spring break, but alas! It snowed that day, and the kids were sent home early!! So I did the lesson today anyway.

After singing our hello song and checking in on the weather, we practiced counting from 1 to 10. Then we sang “10 kleine Ostereier.” It’s a song I made up based on “10 Little Indians.” It goes like this:

There is a Drehscheibe (a wheel) you can turn to change the pattern on the eggs! We looked at the cover of the book, pointing out Hase (rabbit), Pinsel (paintbrush), and Farben (colors). Then I taught them the magic words from the book:

Pinsel, Farbe, eins zwei drei!

On each page, Hasenfranz paints an egg with a different pattern. So we all said the magic words together as I turned the wheel to see the new egg. They loved it!

I also brought in some Easter eggs. I had made some stickers for them using round, white labels. They each got two! But before I handed them out, we used them to count to 20. First, we counted all of them to get to 20. Then we counted each color (I had 5 purple, 5 green, and 9 blue – yes, I was one short!).

I also gave them a Malen-nach-Zahlen page to color. I updated it from the one I’ve used in the past. Instead of the 6 primary colors, I swapped out two, so I could include rosa and grau. I also made a more difficult version, so the older children could have more of a challenge. I let them choose which one they wanted to color.

And here is the work-in-progress and the finished product. Hippo put his stickers on his paper, too. (This is a copy he and I did at home, and you might be able to tell that I helped with some of the coloring. It was fun to do it together!)

I was back in the 1st/2nd grade today! So it was time to tell another story. I selected one of my favorite read-aloud children’s books: Klingelingeling by Nicola Smee (arsEdition, 2010; original English title: Jingle-Jingle).

Of course, I didn’t actually read the book. I told it as a story, which meant I had to add some description. Since the book is copyrighted, I can’t post my version of it here. But it wasn’t too hard to work out!

For today’s lesson, I wanted to add a brief discussion about the weather. So after our hello song, I asked the children about the weather for today. I told them the words in German and wrote them on the board: es regnet, regnerisch, warm, leichter Wind. I’d like to start each lesson with the weather in the future.

From there, we went right into our story. I was really pleased with how it went! It’s such a fun little story, especially when the horse climbs into the sleigh, so he can ride down the hill with the other animals! I did have to figure out how to draw all those animals, though! I used a book called The Usborne Step-By-Step Drawing Book (Usborne, 2014):

(They didn’t have a duck, so I looked up some ideas online.) When I drew the horse, I warned the children not to laugh at my drawings. They actually clapped! They could all tell it was a horse. Success! Here is a look at my finished story board:

When I finished the story, they asked where it was from. So I told them about the book. I happened to have it with me, so I showed it to them. Most of them wanted to hear it, so I read it aloud to them. I think it was actually a great way to reinforce the story and repeat the vocabulary!

I made up some worksheets for them to practice the main words: die Katze, der Hund, das Schwein, die Ente, das Pferd, der Schlitten. I thought about Schnee, too but decided to keep it to 6 words (I like even numbers!). The tasks included:

matching picture to word

tracing the word under the corresponding picture

writing the word under the corresponding picture (I left this one out today and just used the tracing words)

a word search

cut out 4 images and paste them in the correct order on the next page

They did great with the first pages. Some of them had trouble with putting the images in order. It helped if they started with the last one first, since it’s obvious (they flew out of the sled when they reached the bottom of the hill). I did not expect them to be able to read the text under the pictures, but it’s there for exposure.

Before I sent them off to work on the assignment, though, I had one more bit of fun with them. I decided to try a tongue twister! I do love a good tongue twister! I was surprised to find that I had to explain what it was for some of the children. But then I also got to show off my “Peter Piper” 😉

For our German tongue twister – or Zungenbrecher (literally: tongue breaker), I chose:

In Ulm und um Ulm und um Ulm herum

I started by teaching them how to pronounce Ulm. Oooooooo. Then add the L, then the M. Then make it short. Then we started very slowly. And we worked up our speed. Some of them got quite good at it!

After they completed their worksheets, I had one more surprise for them. They had been begging me to read an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems. A few of them have been translated into German, and I just happen to have one: Das Buch über uns (Klett Kinderbuch, 2015; original English title We are in a Book).

For the most part, they really enjoyed it. And some of them knew it well enough in English to translate as we went along. That was fine. It was the end of a very long lesson (I ended up being in the class for an hour and a half!) at the end of a Friday half-day. So it would have been a lot to expect them to sit still and just listen!

Overall, I’d say it was a very successful lesson! I was exhausted, but then I usually am! And it’s so worth it! Even Froggy said he enjoys the lessons, even though he isn’t really learning anything new 🙂

As I mentioned in a recent post, I love teaching about Martinstag, because it embodies the spirit of giving and selflessness. In the past, I’ve taught about Martin in the German story hour and in the pre-k/kindergarten class. This year I finally got to bring it into the 1st and 2nd grade class. Each class is a little bit different. In this post I’ll tell you about what we do …

in Pre-K/Kindergarten…

This is also a mixed class of pre-k and kindergarten children, ages 2 1/2 to 6! I’m always amazed at how well it works to mix the ages of the children. The older ones make good models for the younger ones!

This year, however, we have a lot of younger ones. So after teaching my Martinstag lesson “upstairs” in 1st/2nd grade, I knew I had to make things extra clear and simple for the younger children.

I began by telling the story of Martin in English, using the same book I had used with 1st/2nd: Das erste Buch von Sankt Martin by Erwin Grosche (Gabriel Verlag, 2017)

I had the story written out in English, but I only used it as a reference. I know it well enough by now! This book actually leaves out the more religious aspect of the tale – that the beggar was Christ, who later came to Martin in a dream. As we are not a religious school, I don’t feel comfortable teaching that part of the story. I focus mainly on Martin’s kind and generous nature.

Next I used the word posters to teach the words from “Laterne, Laterne”. This year I brought our au pair along to help with the lantern project. She also helped me by holding the Mond and Sterne, so the children could see all four images at once. It was much easier than me trying to flip through them as we sang!

You can download the posters – with or without words – in this previous post, Der gute Martin.

I just taught them the first half of the song. Then AP4 and I sang the rest of it (Brenne auf mein Licht, brenne auf mein Licht, aber nur meine liebe Laterne nicht). The children tried to follow along, and it sounded quite nice!

Finally it was time to make our paper lanterns. You can read more specifically about that part of the lesson and download the instructions and template here. I broke it down into simple steps and had samples of each step to show the children. They had three things to do:

color the paper with the sun, moon, and stars (I print it on yellow paper, so it looks like it’s glowing!)

fold the paper in half along the dotted line

cut the “fringe” along the dotted lines

The teachers, AP4, and I did the stapling part to assemble the lanterns.

It was such a successful lesson!

Then we got to parade around the classroom and into the front hall. The children really enjoyed that part of it.

I decided not to use Story Listening and tell the fairy tale of the Sterntaler for this lesson. I wanted to be sure they knew the story of Martin and why we make the lanterns. And of course, they needed to learn the song for our little parade!

As I mentioned in a recent post, I love teaching about Martinstag, because it embodies the spirit of giving and selflessness. In the past, I’ve taught about Martin in the German story hour and in the pre-k/kindergarten class. This year I finally got to bring it into the 1st and 2nd grade class. Each class is a little bit different. In this post I’ll tell you about what we do …

in 1st & 2nd Grade…

This is a mixed class of 22 students. I couldn’t just jump right in with books and songs, like I did in Story Hour. Instead, I started with the story of Sterntaler. The children were outraged that the poor girl was all alone! And then shocked when she kept giving everything away! They were right with me the whole time 🙂 My board looked a little different, since they needed more help to understand it. But they had also experienced the method the week before when I told them Goldilocks. Here is a picture of my finished board for Sterntaler:

After that, I read them the story of Martin, using the book Das erste Buch von Sankt Martin by Erwin Grosche (Gabriel Verlag, 2017). I used the book mainly for the illustrations and wrote out the story in English beforehand. I knew after hearing Sterntaler, that was probably enough German for that class (especially since it was 2pm on a Friday … the week of Halloween!).

Next I wanted to teach them the song, “Laterne, Laterne“. The beginning is so simple with its four words: Laterne, Sonne, Mond, Sterne. I knew they would need a little movement by this time, though, so I came up with a little game. I had printed out the vocab words on small cards. I printed enough so that each child could have a card. I just used my full-sized word posters and printed them 4-to-a-page. Then I laminated them and cut them down to size.

I handed the cards out to the children and then had them get into groups according to the picture – in order, of course! I had already gone over the words using my full-sized word posters. So they were familiar enough with the vocab. I called out a word, and that group had to raise their picture and say the word. I mixed them up and first. Then I told them to pay attention, because we were going to speed it up! And I went in order according to the song: Laterne! Laterne! Sonne! Mond! Sterne! They enjoyed the little game. And weren’t they surprised when I told them they had just learned the beginning of a song?!

You can download the word posters along with song lyrics in the post Der gute Martin.

Finally, it was time to make our lanterns! We did them a little differently in this older class. Although in hindsight, I’m not sure I would do it this way again!

I gave them white paper cut down to size (without the strip for the handle) and let them color it however they liked.

I gave them the lantern template printed on yellow paper (without the sun, moon, and stars – just the lines for cutting and folding) and asked them to cut the strip off the end to make the handle.

They glued their white paper to the yellow template (I might do this step myself, in advance, if I try it again).

They folded the paper (I was surprised how many of them did not fold on the line, but folded the long edge of the paper up to the line! If you read my post with instructions, you’ll see why I decided to give step-by-step instructions the next time!)

They cut the “fringe”.

We went around and stapled the lanterns together along with their handles

The lanterns turned out alright in the end. But it took so long that we did not have time to parade in the halls.

Then again, it was the last hour of school on a Friday. And did I mention it was Halloween week?? Scary stuff!! 🙂

Follow Blog via Email

Willkommen!

Hi there! I’m a non-native speaker of German raising my two boys to be bilingual.
Froggy was born in 2009 and is now starting 2nd grade.
Hippo was born in 2012 and is in his second year of pre-school.
My husband PER is from the Netherlands, but he doesn’t speak Dutch with the kids. Although he will read books in Dutch to them sometimes.
We have our 4th au pair (AP4) with us this year. She’s from Germany.
I’m often creating materials for the boys, and I wanted a way to share them with other German-speaking families. You can download all of the materials I post for FREE!